Belo Monte Dam update from Altimira

[CoryWally]

Latest developments reported on the BBC website:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-12586170

[dconnors]

This appears to be good news then!

[grokefish]

One would hope so.

News Flash!
Aquarists of the world enlist the Confederate Air Force and use historical war planes to mount an attack on the newly completed Belo Monte Dam. Brazilian F-16 fighters easily defeated the attacking forces.

Aquarists petition Congress to declare war on Brazil but sympathetic Congress members can't get even a quorum together. Republican Congress people vow to obstruct any efforts to open a new war they haven't fabricated for their own reasons.
Senate Minority leader, Mitch Mconnell, says Brazil is in the same philosophical camp so we will support any anti-environmental policies of our like minded, corrupt brothers in Brazil.

Larry, that post made my day!

[plecoboy]

Great news!!

[HaakonH]

A grim update:

http://www.internationalrivers.org/en/node/6298

Haakon

[apistomaster]

Engineering projects of this scale have never been deterred by environmental, archeological nor local residents' concerns in the history of the world.

Brazil is becoming an increasingly major economy. It was in the forefront of bio-ethanol for energy independence. It is probably viewed by the Brazilian government to be a big piece of their energy independence unlike the USA, China and Europe. That deep ocean oil reserves have been discovered off the Brazilian portion of the continental shelf is merely icing on the cake. Energy independence in the future will become more and more a cornerstone for any nation to be free of the whims of the international petroleum cartels and Brazil is a leader in this respect. That is partly why they have had such a high GDP compared to most developed countries. The writing is on the wall.
Like the doomed crew of the Nostromo discovered when Ripley gained access to the main computer, "Mother",
"All other concerns are secondary"
"All other concerns are secondary"
"All other concerns are secondary"
End of transmission

[Taratron]

So is there any reason why they won't let people in to get as many fish out as possible pre-dam?

[racoll]

So is there any reason why they won't let people in to get as many fish out as possible pre-dam?

You can't do that, they're protected species ;)

[apistomaster]

So is there any reason why they won't let people in to get as many fish out as possible pre-dam?

That is the $64,000 question.
My money is on the dam being constructed, the native fish will all be killed with rotenone(to prevent slowly suffering lingering deaths) then the river and reservoir will be restocked with Carp and Tilapia. A plentiful and indestructible food supply for all. No more annoying outside controversy over the fate of the endemic and irreplaceable little sucker mouth catfish.
European Carp have become established in the Rio Negro decades ago so this scenario is not without some precedent.

[MatsP]

My money is on the dam being constructed, the native fish will all be killed with rotenone(to prevent slowly suffering lingering deaths) then the river and reservoir will be restocked with Carp and Tilapia.

I suspect introducing "foodfish" in the dam is highly likely, but I also don't believe they will use any sophisticated method to exterminate any existing species.

--
Mats

[TwoTankAmin]

The only way to help these species still remains the "illegal" removal of them from the rivers before they can be made extinct by the Brazilian government and the related business interests. I used to think otherwise. But when you try to stand in the way of progress you just get bulldozed.

[apistomaster]

Mats,
I agree. They won't really poison the native fish but they will see which ones survive and thrive but will probably find it is necessary to use some native species, perhaps some of the big Pim hybrids and Cichla spp and try to develop some kind of commercial fisheries as an after thought. Some native species of commercial value are likely to do well in the reservoir and will support some kind of food fish fisheries. Food fish are far more important to the Brazilian economy than ornamental tropical fish.

[Suckermouth]

Another news update: Brazil grants building permit

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-13614684

[dconnors]

How unfortunate!

[TwoTankAmin]

Early in this thread a link was offered to a post by Heiko at simply discus. The post was dated 7/31/2010 and here is a piece of it:

L-46, Hypancistrus zebra, is fortunately bred by, let me say already the thousands, in Indonesia. All by hormone injection. Still sold at high price, but soon will go down.

So here we are approaching a year later and I am wondering what happened to all the cheap zebras? Have heard little about them in the USA save once about 6-8 months back some were offered via wholesalers at $175 each for 1.5 in fish. Since then nothing.

I am also curious how many folks here would want to buy an H. zebra which was the result of hormone induced spawning?

[MatsP]

This comes up several times a year: "Someone is breeding thousands of H. zebra, they will be cheap soon".

I can guarantee that they will never be CHEAP! They don't reproduce quickly enough, and there is a huge number of shops in the world to take "thousands" down to small numbers quite quickly.

Say you have 100 breeding pairs [which is quite a lot - at $250 per fish, that makes $50000 worth of fish - I'm sure they cost less if you buy 200 at once, but I suspect they will cost a lot more than $50 each still ]. Now, let's say each pair produce 3.5 broods of 20 fry [and all fry survive to saleable size] in the first year, it takes a year (or a bit more) to reach saleable size. So in a year, we have 100 * 20 * 3.5 = 7000 fry. Maidenhead Aquatics has something like 200 shops in the UK. So if the WHOLE lot of fish were to be sold to MA branches in the UK, there would be 35 of them in each shop.

Yes, we could have our breeder invest even more in breeding pairs, or build up a larger number of breeding pairs by taking a few of the fry to grow out to maturity. But it will take a long time until we read millions of H. zebra produced - and the amount of tank-space needed would be fairly large, compared to breeding some much easier to breed fish that produce many fry that grow quickly.

I expect there are 1000 shops in Europe, another 1000 in Australasia, 2000 in North and South America. That's 4000 shops. To put 10 fish in each shop, you need 40000 H. zebra. According to the above calculation, that's about 600 breeding pairs of H. zebra. That's an awful large number of breeding pairs. And I'm sure you know of a few fairly expensive fish that you can find 10 of in almost any shop you go to.

--
Mats

[TwoTankAmin]

Mats-

Yes you read these statements regularly. I myself have done the same sort of calculations as you offered above. But to me there is a big difference when some "screen name" makes that statement vs when Heiko Bleher makes it. I would say the same applies to Ingo Seidel or Hans-Georg Evers. When these folks make a statement, I pay attention.

And not discussed here is the issue of where would one have acquired 1,200+ wild caught zebras since the ban went into effect???? I presume to end up with 600 pairs one actually would have had to purchase a lot more to insure against normal losses and to have a decent chance of working out a 1 to 1 sexing ratio for the 1,200 breeding fish?

I am still curious to know, "Would you, or most others here, would you knowingly buy a zebra pleco produced using hormones."

[MatsP]

It is probably realistic to believe that many tank-bred fish are hormone-induced breeding - at least of the more "exotic" forms - some of the loaches, torpedo barbs and many others. For a commercial breeder, using hormones is a financial choice [and of course an ethical one - but most businesses don't look too hard into that] - if you can make the fish breed regularly because you inject something into the fish or add something to their food/water, rather than wait for them to be "ready by themselves", that increases the profit quite noticably, especially on fish that are hard to breed in the first place.

And what I meant when I said "I've heard it all before" isn't that I don't believe they are bred in relatively large numbers in Asia - it's just that the scale of mass-breeding you need to make them "cheap" or "common" [which is what some people dread and other people look forward to] is pretty unrealistic.

And your point exactly about the "where do you get 1200+ mature H. zebra" - it's both a logistical problem (smuggling them out of brazil) and a financial problem of cost.
--
Mats

[Jools]

Hormone injected or hormone induced? If the latter, I'd prefer them over wild animals illegally smuggled out of Brazil. Assuming no aesthetic or developmental difference.

Jools

[Narwhal72]

I think it's important that there is a difference between fish that are hormoned in order to color up for sale at a younger age (testosterone) which is done through hormone induced feed. And fish that are injected with hormone for breeding (Bovine Chorionic Gonadotropin).

The former is used only for improving the commercial appeal of the fish and may lead to long term health problems such as sterility of females.

The latter is performed to induce breeding in fish that would be logistically or economically difficult to get to breed in captivity. This has no effect on the fry produced or the broodstock and allows the commercial propagation of a species that would otherwise have to be harvested from the wild to satisfy demand.

Personally I would prefer it if all aquaculture was free of hormones but I really have little issue with the latter and more of an issue with the former.

Of course this discussion is deviating from the OP pretty far and probably should be put into another thread.

Andy

[TwoTankAmin]

Actually, it is not so far from what the OP wrote in starting this thread:

I came across a report from Altimira, Brazil in the New York Times about the on-going furor over the construction of the Belo Monte Hydroelectric dam.
Construction begins next year and Altimira will soon be under water. Good bye, wild Hypancistrus zebra.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/16/world ... f=americas

(Red color added by me.)

[Shaun]

This may belong in a separate thread, but are any of the dams effected by the recent Amazonian drought?
Shaun

[MatsP]

This may belong in a separate thread, but are any of the dams effected by the recent Amazonian drought?
Shaun

Low volumes of water in the river where the dam is will indeed affect the efficency of the power-plant - no water -> no power production. Of course, they have already considered this, and to avoid having lack of water, they are planning to build several more dams up the river [destroying even more of it, and costing a lot more money].

--
Mats

[apistomaster]

The New York Times had another article about the Belo Monte Hydro project, 5th largest in the world, I believe.
Brazil's new President has signed off the construction contract and supports it as much as his predecessor. It is scheduled for completion by 2015 so obviously the preliminaries are well out of the way. That is not far in the future so whatever the effects are, we will know what they are very soon.
The focus was on displaced indigenous populations. No source ever discusses any ecological concerns for the endemic flora and fauna.

Commercially bred specimens from farms that use hormones has been accepted for every other fish. Discus are an especially noticeable example and those using these techniques command the majority of the market.
Some hormones are used to induce breeding and I do not have any objection to this practice in major farming operations. These techniques allow the breeding of Asian Arowanas, Raphael type catfish and all the Bala and Red tail Shark groups plus the Roseline barbs are bred this way and all these species are nearly extinct in their native habitats.
The use of testostorone analogs is used mainly to induce sterility in fish to protect their breeders near monopoly and these fish should be avoided if at all possible. Discus are the most likely to be tampered with although I have seen them used on different color forms of Dwarf Goramis. Often only male Dwarf goramis are sold but sometimes a masculinized female slips through but they can not be bred. Dwarf Gorami were once a fish every hobbyist breeder raised at least once. Now that is difficult. I do know of one small importer and on line vendor who is bringing in wild caught Colisa sota and Colisa lalia so it is still possible to breed them. I obtained some human Chorionic Gonadotropin from a local vet. He said that equine derived was often rejected by horses but the human product was not. I do not know anything about the bovine form nor what class is used in the commercial fish breeding trade. I was trying it on fish too small to inject so I dosed the water but it did not seem to work for me. Maybe it is only effective in fish large enough to survive the handling and injections?
If we were more knowledgeable about the correct choice and correct use of hormones with species which need some help our attitudes would probably change to being less against their use.

In the rough calculations MatsP described, I think 20 is a high estimate for average egg production. 12 to 15 is more like it. Makes an even more dismal potential number of commercially produced fish and why their prices will always remain so high.

[Narwhal72]

I would have to disagree that the use of testosterone is used mainly to induce sterility in fish. It is a side effect to be sure, but it is not the main purpose. The main purpose it to make young fish and females color up brightly like mature males so they are sellable to the general public.

It is far more common in african cichlids such as peacocks and Electric blues (Scianochromis fryeri) which would otherwise be a gray fish until they are mature than it is in discus. Simply for the fact that the market for Africans is many times larger than that for discus.

And yes it is darn near impossible to find female dwarf gourami's. But the reason is because the dealers have a hard time selling the gray females so the farms took to only distributing the colored males or hormoned females that look like males.

Andy

[apistomaster]

Whatever their motivations may be, the treatment shortens their life and overall vitality.